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Thursday, July 2, 2015

Post-Mortem on our First 40K Event

So here we are, a week or so after our first 40k event. I've had some time to sit back and think about how things went, what was good, what was bad, and what we can change.

First off, I'd like to thank everyone who came out, and a very special thanks to everyone who sent in questions (no matter how many!) about the scenarios/rules/FAQ/etc...! It was awesome to see the community support on this, both in filling the event in effectively a single day, and in the actual attendance of the event. We were originally looking at 16 people, bumped to 18, then bumped to 20 with a waiting list of 4 people, and ended with a 20 man event with me as the ringer. In a city with as small a community as ours this was fantastic to see.

With that out of the way, let's do the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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The Good

- I feel that the venue was solid. We were close by to food, had lots of parking (albeit on the street). Our hosts, FDB, also marked all GW merch at 15% off for tourney attendees which was pretty spectacular. It was pretty easy to get between tables, there was ample room to store bags, armies, etc... under tables. Lastly, for the most part, the AC worked pretty well...

- This one is a bit biased, but I feel that the prize support went pretty well. We added more prizes thanks to community feedback as well as doing draw prizes, etc... and ensured that at least 7 of the attendees were walking away with at least their entry fee in prizes. We also got a cut of the entry fees as was noted, since this was a fundraiser after all, and that was definitely a big help to us... more on that later.

The Bad

- The scoring system. We had not anticipated the number of clean sweeps we would see each round. In fact in one round we saw an even split with half of the players getting 15 points or more (out of a possible 20), and half getting a score of 5 or lower (with a minimum of 2 possible). We are addressing this for CCBB by crunching this to a 13:4 score range instead of 20:2 to be less punitive on losing players, and to prevent run-away scores after the first 2-3 rounds.

- The (paint) scoring system. Long story short, people didn't read the player's pack and paint scoring was totally FUBAR as a result. We didn't really have the time or energy to correct these every single round or debate it with players. We awarded Best Painted based on popular vote instead of the scoring due to these issues. At future events we'll be doing judged painting over lunch for scoring, and Best Painted by popular vote out of the top X (probably 5) scored armies.

- (Some of) the tables. When we had originally looked at doing a 16 person event we knew that the tables would all be solid. When we went to 18 we had some concerns, and when we hit 20 we found out we actually had an issue. Overall, I think everything worked out (and feedback has said that we did pretty well!) but we had at least one table that we were very unhappy with. To this end we'll actually be looking at capping future events at 16 or 18 attendees unless we can secure some other tables for use. This will not be a concern at CCBB as the terrain/tables are being provided by a totally different group.

The Ugly

- Prizes... I said we'd be back on this. I'll admit it, I said it in our thread on Game Summit and I'll say it here, we fucked up big. We ended up awarding Best General to the wrong person. A player had written down the scores backwards on one of their sheets and it resulted in us awarding 2 points to someone in round 4 instead of awarding them 20 points, and this was not noticed until after prizes were awarded. To correct this we have contacted the person who should have won Best General and will be compensating them (in cash) the full amount that they should have been awarded. We'll be requiring player signatures on scoring sheets in the future to ensure that this doesn't happen again.

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Outside of that, we've gotten feedback on the scenarios and will be doing a bit of tweaking before CCBB, but don't expect a complete overhaul. We may go in a different direction after CCBB or we may not. We understand that Maelstrom (in any form) is not for everyone, but honestly it's impossible to cater to everyone so we've gotta do what we've gotta do.

If you've got any feedback about our event, have questions about it, etc... please get in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, or by email.